Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Pathway Genomics IS a lab. Not an algorithm.


Today an article came out in BioIT world about Pathway Genomics. (Sounds Eerily like Amway)

With a tagline like, "Your Future, Only Better" I thought that maybe they were like Vanilla Sky or some Total Recall like service. I could only guess how in the world they could offer a better future through a SNP scan.....

Yes another DTC Genomics/SNPscan Company in the game. Hopefully they will accept regulations and not try to manipulate the laws. I hope that they act responsibly with the data and samples. I hope that they will be transparent and honest.

FROM Bio-IT

"In common with other consumer genomics firms, Becker oversees an editorial team to review criteria from the latest peer-reviewed genome association studies. That team includes Victoria Magnuson, who trained with Francis Collins and John Todd and is an expert in type 2 diabetes genetics. “We are putting together a white paper that will eventually be on our website that describes our criteria,” said Becker. “We’ve tried to be pretty conservative as to what is acceptable, validated research versus preliminary research markers.”

Mostly, I hope that they put people with clinical experience into positions of management and decision making. Because if they don't, they will be making the same mistakes as 23andSergey.

Fast follower? Probably. But is fast what is needed here? No, I would say slow and methodical is the best way to be in this business. Which is why DeCodeMe may ultimately win in the end. That is unless they go off the deep end and push clinical tests from recent discoveries without validation......

Oh wait, they already did that........

So to Pathway I say, good luck. My guess is that your tests will cost 75.95 USD very, very, very soon.

The Sherpa Says: Your future, Only better. Damn, I am glad you are around Pathway (Sounds eerily like Amway) because I have no ability to make my own future better without you.

HT Dan V.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Steve

pathway has strong links to RealAge; a marketing firm
They have NO ONE on their team who has ever done a genome scan; and you should see their LAB :(
Can not believe they will be taken seriously

Anonymous said...

the above comment is nonsense. Their lab is state-of-the-art with a high-complexity CLIA license covering at least 5 different genotyping and sequencing platforms. As a vendor i have seen it. In addition, they have a number of MDs on their staff, including a CMO named Nova who is (no pun intended) a super-star biotech/clinical guy. "anonymous" above is a joke. Dont underestimate this group.